The court ruled the photographs are exempt from Washington state’s Public Records Act and releasing the photos would “violate the Cobain family’s due process rights under the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

Cobain’s widow, Courtney Love, and his daughter who was a toddler at the time of his death, Frances Bean Cobain, filed testimonies to keep the photos from being made public.

The ruling comes after Seattle journalist Richard Lee appealed the case’s dismissal. Lee has pursued the release of 55 photos in an attempt to prove Cobain did not die from suicide in 1994 but was murdered.

He has been testing the limits of public records laws for years, and in the process has angered Cobain's family.

“As both a father and an advocate for victims’ rights, I’m relieved the Court upheld that death-scene images are not appropriate for disclosure,” Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said in a statement. “After a family member endures the tragedy of losing a loved one, we have a moral obligation to protect their privacy. No one should worry whether they’ll happen upon photos of a family member’s body as they scroll through their social media feed.”

Cobain, the frontman for Seattle grunge band Nirvana, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in his Seattle home in 1994.

Love and her daughter wrote a letter to the judge in the trial court seeking to block the release of the photos. Frances Bean Cobain wrote that she already faces harassment from fans "obsessed" with her father and fears that could get worse.

"I have had to cope with many personal issues because of my father's death," Cobain wrote. "Coping with even the possibility that those photographs could be made public is very difficult. Further sensationalizing it through the release of these pictures would cause us indescribable pain."

“As a member of Washington State’s Sunshine Committee, I regularly advocate to open more records for public access, but out of respect to family members, I continue to believe releasing images of a person’s scene of death is out-of-bounds," Holmes said.

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The detective on the case of Kurt Cobain's death back in 1994 recently pulled out the file and found four rolls of undeveloped film from inside musician's house the day he died.
VPC